Schmidt cancels Eastern trip

Press, 25 August 1980, Page 6

Schmidt cancels Eastern trip

NZPA-Reuter Bonn The West German Chancellor (Mr Helmut Schmidt) has called off talks with the East German leader, Erich Honecker, and it was clear that Labour unrest in Poland prompted the move.

It was the second time this week that a meeting between Mr Schmidt and an Eastern Bloc Communist leader had been cancelled. A prepared Government statement said: “The developments in Europe as they have occurred in the past few days make it appear to the Federal Government that next week is not the right time.”

Mr . Schmidt’s spokesman announced the postponement in Hamburg four days after the Polish leader, Edward Gierek, shelved talks with the Chancellor because of the Labour unrest that has paralysed Poland’s Baltic ports and factories. The Schmidt-Honecker meeting was planned for next Thursday and Friday at Werbeilinsee, East Germany. It was the second time the meeting between Mr Schmidt and Mr Honecker had been postponed. The East-West tension over the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan forced the two leaders to call off a meeting they had planned for last January.

The meeting would have been the first between leaders of East and West Germany on East German soil since Mr Schmidt’s predecessor, Willy Brandt, met East German Prime Minister (Willie Stoph) in Erfurt 10 years ago. Bonn’s official statement made it clear that West Germany wanted to continue the policy of good-neigh-bourly relations with its Eastern neighbour.

“The Federal Government considers the talks between the Chancellor and the State; Council chairman (Mr Honecker) necessary in the_ interest of further developing relations between the two German States,” it said. Chancellor Schmidt has been the chief Western protagonist of detente since the Soviet intervention, in Afghanistan chilled relations between the United States and the Soviet Union,